


the certain knot of peace

by firebreathing_bitchqueen



Series: Wayhaven Week 2020 [2]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Prompt Fic, did beauty and the beast shape my romantic expectations? yes, libraries! and romance!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebreathing_bitchqueen/pseuds/firebreathing_bitchqueen
Summary: The detective seeks solace in her new favorite place. (Wayhaven Week, Day 6: Nightmare)
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Series: Wayhaven Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830454
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	the certain knot of peace

**Author's Note:**

> looks like "sleepless nights" are my new writing theme, you guys.

“Holland?” Nate’s voice is soft and gentle, but I flinch anyway, then look up, smiling sheepishly as he walks fully into the library, pressing the door shut behind him with a quiet thud.

“Hey,” I say from my spot on the couch, slipping a bookmark into my book and shutting it.

I let it rest on my knees, which are drawn up to my chest in the corner of the library couch. I’m in the Warehouse tonight, having slept over after staying too late to review old supernatural case materials. I’d said I was engrossed in learning more about the still very new world in which I’d found myself – not untrue, as I did genuinely both need and want to learn more, especially considering my fledgling relationship with my mother’s shadowy employer, the Agency, and her team of vampire special agents, Unit Bravo. One of whom is currently striding across the library at the Warehouse, their new permanent home base in Wayhaven, looking unacceptably attractive for three o’clock in the morning, even with the obvious concern creasing around his dark eyes.

“Everything okay?” He asks, settling onto the worn leather couch beside me and reaching a hand out to curve over mine, still resting on the book on my pajamaed knees.

I’m not surprised he’s found me here, given that the Warehouse library is his favorite place, the books almost all his, and I get the impression that many of the hours he spends not needing sleep due to the whole immortal being thing are instead spent in here reading. And, lately, with me, since my fledgling professional relationship with the team has extended into a very new, decidedly less-professional relationship with him in particular. My vampire boyfriend might be the most unbelievable thing in a series of objectively absurd events I’ve had to deal with this year, ever since I learned why my mother had always been so absent from my life. And ever since I’d been hunted and kidnapped for indefinite use as some kind of human steroid for an unhinged vampire. Turns out, the supernatural is real, and my blood is unfortunately special, rendering me immune to many of the powers used by supernaturals, and supercharging those powers if any of them decide they have a taste for my blood. So now my town is crawling with them, and I’m working with my mother and her team as the official human liaison for the town of Wayhaven. And now I’m dating one of them.

“Just couldn’t sleep,” I say, hoping to sound breezy but presumably failing if the unchanged concern streaking across his face is any indication.

He rubs his thumb idly over my hand. “More nightmares?”

I attempt another grin. “Well, I didn’t exactly go to sleep in the first place,” I admit, turning my hand over and lacing my fingers through his, feeling strangely soothed even by this contained contact with Nate.

He frowns. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” I say, although I can’t help the sigh that comes out with it. “I got tired of trying, so I figured I could at least use the time productively. Well, distractingly, anyway.” I gesture at the novel under our linked hands. I’d been reading more for pleasure and distraction than for actual learning. Books had always been a favored escape, but the lingering trauma from my encounter with Murphy had led me to spend more of my interrupted sleeping time reading in order to fill my brain with something other than the white noise of anxiety that liked to visit in the wee hours. The new anxiety this year had also brought me was the other reason I’d stayed at the Warehouse again tonight: between Murphy, the number of times I’d run into Bobby en route to or ( _ugh_ ) at my apartment, and Falk popping into my bedroom mirror more than once during our last case a few weeks ago, I’d become a little more uneasy than I wanted to admit about staying alone at my apartment. Rather than admit my discomfort, I’d spent an increasing number of nights “accidentally” staying too late at the Warehouse and “having no choice” but to stay the night, since I usually walked there and had a room at the ready anyway.

“It’s not okay,” he counters gently. “You need sleep.”

“Tell that to my brain,” I say dryly, shifting so my raised knees fall to the side towards Nate, curling my bare feet underneath my hips on the sofa, my book sliding to rest between the arm of the couch and my left hip. I keep our fingers tangled together in my lap. “I’ll sleep when I sleep. I’ve given up trying to force it. Besides,” I lift my chin towards the walls of books surrounding us, “You’ve got plenty of material to keep me busy in the meantime.”

“Is that why you’ve been staying here more recently?” He teases gently. “For the books?”

“I mean, I’ve read all the ones in my apartment, what else am I supposed to do?”

“You could try sleeping.” He smiles at me, but the concern on his face is still there.

“And lose this precious time together?” I affect a mockingly serious tone, trying to keep the mood light.

“We can spend time together during normal waking hours, you know,” he responds mildly.

I quirk a brow. “I meant me and the books.”

He laughs. “I didn’t realize you were only interested in me for my book collection.”

“I can’t say it’s not a _really_ nice perk. _Beauty and the Beast_ really shaped my romantic expectations as a kid. Extensive personal libraries have been the quickest way to my heart since I was about six,” I grin up at him. “But, I mean, you have other good qualities, too.”

He cocks his head to the side quizzically, amusement clear on his open face.

My grin widens. “I take it you have _not_ seen Disney’s 1991 classic film?”

“I must have missed that one.”

“We really have to fix that. Seriously, I’ve seen it no fewer than,” I tilt my head and look up for a moment, as though seriously doing the math in my head. “Approximately eighty-six thousand times, give or take, and I’m like a tenth of your age,” I tease, raising my eyebrows at him in mock reproach.

He rolls his eyes and tugs gently on the hand still wrapped around his, pulling me against him, and I let him, leaning my head against his arm and feeling my body relax, the tension I hadn’t noticed before in my shoulders unknotting.

“You’re ridiculous,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss on the top of my head. “And clearly under-rested.”

I open my mouth to protest but am caught in a yawn instead. “Don’t say it,” I grumble instead.

“Say what?”

“Don’t say, ‘I told you so’,” I mumble around another yawn that wants to escape now the dam is broken.

“I didn’t say a word,” he murmurs, mouth still close enough to my head that his breath warms my hairline.

I sigh and let my eyes drift shut for a breath longer than necessary. “I’m trying, you know,” I admit softly.

“I know,” he says against the top of my head.

We don’t say anything for a moment, and I feel the weight of too many sleepless nights in my aching eyelids and the dull throb at the base of my skull.

I shift against Nate’s arm, tilting my face up to look at him. “Thanks for hanging out with me.”

He smiles down at me. “I am always happy to spend time with you. Although I do wish it weren’t at the expense of your rest.”

I swallow another yawn. “You and me both. But I usually have a better chance of sleeping here than at my apartment.” I frown slightly, feeling a strange, wild pang of sadness realizing it’s true as I say it.

Nate seems to notice it, too, and squeezes my hand. “Not always a ‘certain knot of peace,’ I suppose.”

“I suppose Sidney must not have had occasion to commune with the supernatural,” I quip. “Or he knew no degree of insomnia could withstand Elizabethan sonnets.”

“Not a fan of poetry, I take it?”

“I love poetry. I’m just not particularly crazy about sonnets.” I shrug, then tip my head back, resting it against the soft back of the sofa. Another reason I loved holing up in the Warehouse library: between the perfectly worn leather sofas and the literal fortress of books surrounding them, it sometimes felt like someone had managed to turn the concept of comfort food into a real, tangible place. Maybe if I could live in this cityscape of bound pages, I think, I wouldn’t even need Xanax. 

Still resting against the back of the couch, I roll my head to the side and look back up at him through my eyelashes. “I’m guessing you, on the other hand, are definitely a sonnet person,” I posit.

“Many people find sonnets beautiful,” he counters, his voice soft. “And I am not immune to beauty.”

His dark eyes haven’t left my face and I’m not convinced he’s still talking about poetry.

And then his mouth curves up in a gentle smile and the brief frisson of tension dissipates. “So, what were you reading when I interrupted you?”

I smile back at him. “Re-reading, actually.” I hold up the dog-eared paperback, its creased green cover displaying the title in neat white text: _The Secret Garden_. “Patron saint of cranky, lonely children everywhere. It’s been a favorite since I was a kid,” I say, a little sheepishly. “It’s one of the ones I end up going back to whenever I can’t sleep.”

“Which seems to be happening quite a lot recently,” his voice sounds somewhere between contrition and grief.

“How do you know it wasn’t happening quite a lot before?” I joke halfheartedly, rubbing my thumb along the knuckles of the hand still wrapped around mine. “Maybe I should be thanking Murphy for giving old nightmares new material.”

A flicker of an almost-smile twitches at the corners of his mouth, breaking the crease of sorrow I saw before. “Careful, Holland. That seems dangerously close to looking on the bright side.”

I flap my paperback in the air. “Even the most contrary of us have our moments. Besides, you said it yourself, I’m under-rested. I can’t be held responsible for any insomnia-induced optimism I might display tonight.”

“Duly noted,” he says. The almost-smile widens, and it feels like my heart wants to stretch along with it. 

I start to smile back at him, but it turns into another yawn in the process. “Sorry,” I laugh behind my hand.

“You should really try to get some sleep,” he says, but there’s no command behind the sentiment.

I lean back against him and hold up my book again as if the worn pages are some kind of shield against sensible advice. “I’m going to keep reading a little longer. But,” I tilt my head again and smile sleepily up at him. “I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to stay.”

“Fine,” he concedes, disentangling his hand from mine to wrap his arm around my shoulder. I nestle into the warmth of his side and reopen my book.

“As I said,” he continues softly, lips once again brushing the top of my head. “I’m not immune to beauty.”

**Author's Note:**

> the sonnet referenced above (and in the title) is Sonnet 39 (https://vault.hanover.edu/~smith/AS039.html) by Sir Philip Sidney in his series Astrophil and Stella.


End file.
